On June 23rd, Apple announced that the aging, obsolete, overpriced Thunderbolt Display is being discontinued. No replacement display was announced, and customers have been directed to 3rd party products. What does this mean for the Mac Pro?

It is with a mix of sadness, contempt, and relief that I offer you the news that Apple acknowledged it has put a bullet in its 5-year old Thunderbolt Display. The company issued a statement to The Verge confirming the news, directing customers to third parties for their external display needs.

The Chinese company that won a ban on iPhone 6 sales in Beijing has been dead for about a year. But if you're thinking this is a case where China's government is using Shenzhen Baili's name in a political game against Apple, think again; this is a case where a company couldn't cut it making crappy products in a cut throat market.

Dr. Mac says he's tried at least half a dozen apps for controlling his smart HomeKit devices, but the only one that checked all his boxes was the Eve app from Elgato. He's got the lowdown in this installment of Rants & Raves.

It wasn't discussed in the WWDC keynote. But Apple's has been developing a new file system for all its devices called Apple File System. It's been a hot topic of discussion over the last week. Here are some of the notable things we've learned since the first day of WWDC along with some context.

John Gruber has posted the full video of The Talk Show Live from last week's World Wide Developer Conference, where his guests were Apple senior vice presidents Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi. It's a great interview, and I highly encourage you to watch it in its entirety, but there were six things in particular I learned.

The iPhone and Apple Watch contain sophisticated security and encryption protocols for use with Apple Pay. To make it very easy for customers, Apple has brilliantly made the setup and use incredibly simple. Has that simplicity fooled customers into thinking that the Apple Pay process is risky and makes them vulnerable? A Pew study suggests that potential customers mistake the simplicity for various kinds of vulnerabilities, and they shy away.

Apple's recent dispute with the FBI combined with the older architecture of OS X/macOS compared to iOS means that Apple is likely to place new emphasis on Macintosh security. It's been an evolving process, but it's likely to accelerate from now on.

This week in Dr. Mac's Rants & Raves, the good doctor shares his first impressions of HomeKit, Apple’s framework for securely controlling smart home products with your iPhone or other devices. While only moderately impressed with HomeKit so far, he does have a couple of HomeKit-compatible products he likes enough to recommends in spite of HomeKit's shortcomings.

The thing that most excited me about Monday's World Wide Developer Conference had to be Apple opening up significant features in its platform(s) to developer, including Siri, Maps, iMessage, and to a lesser extent, the Phone app. There was a lot to be excited about from the keynote, but this particular move could be the single biggest catalyst for improved functionality in Apple devices, and it represents a significant milestone in Apple loosening some control.